


take one sip (dream of this counterfeit)

by shuofthewind



Series: The Making of Monsters [SIDEFICS] [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Gift Fic, Male-Female Friendship, Milk And Honey Warrior Queen, Missing Scene, Post-The Path of Righteousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4242546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She runs, and the city is burying itself in her bones.</p><p>[Or, the one where Karen has a very bad day. And then it gets worse.]</p><p>[Missing scene from <em>The Price of War</em>. Takes place during Chap. 17. Karen POV. Gift for malfaou. Happy birthday, m'dear!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	take one sip (dream of this counterfeit)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malfaou](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=malfaou).



> Ugh god this is so angsty and I'm so sorry. I meant to have this up on Sunday, BUT, family drama happened (thanks, family) so I've only really had a chance to sit down and thrash this scene into submission today. Sorry. :(
> 
> (Put all blame on my brother's shoulders. Feel free, seriously.)
> 
> It's kind of angsty for a birthday gift, but I mean...it's also a _Daredevil_ fic, so I feel like angst is a big, big requirement.
> 
>  **To non-malfaou people:** if you haven't read _The Price of War_ , you will probably be confused. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Title comes from "If My House Was Burning" by Charlotte OC, which you should really listen to. If you haven't already. /nudges you at song/

When she was in high school, Karen had run track.

It’s not as if she’d been the star of the team, or whatever it was that people always assume when she says that. She did long-distance relays and in the winter when it was too cold to run outside she’d lurk in the gym and just _run,_ because it helped things make sense. Her fears about college, about boys, about life outside of Ohio, about where she’d go and what she would do—those never mattered when she was running. She could pretend none of it existed, and if she was alone, she could close her eyes and just _feel_. She felt like she could actually do something. She felt like she could be free.

This isn’t freedom. This is nothing but terror, pure, abject, unending, as she whips around the corner outside of Nelson, Murdock & Lewis. She doesn’t know where she’s going, really. There are a million places she could go, inside the city and out of it, away from this place, away from all the terrible things that have crept out from the dark.

(— _and you’re one of them, Karen, you’re one of those terrible things, because you killed a man tonight and there’s nothing you can do to change that, and if they find out then you’ll end up dead, they’re all going to end up dead, Darcy and Foggy and Matt and Ben and Elena, just like Daniel Fisher, just like the first time you fucked up, just like the first time_ —)

She runs. She hasn’t had a chance to practice since what happened with Danny, and her legs cramp up and her lungs start to burn before the first half-mile is over, but she just runs. Her heels are pointless. She kicks them off. Karen avoids the main streets, bolts through alleyways and side-lots, ignoring the bursts of pain in her feet when she slips on asphalt, when her stockings tear and there’s nothing between her skin and the city. And _this_ is what Wesley had meant, when he said the grime soaks in, when he said you can never wash it away, because now the concrete of Hell’s Kitchen is embedded in her feet, in her legs, the only parts of her that she’s always been able to rely on to take her places, to save her. And it’s never going to leave.

( _—I haven’t been here long enough—_ )

She sees the shadow in a flickering before the devil drops down in front of her. Karen screams, and pinwheels back, landing hard on her ass with her hands scraping against the edge of a dumpster. He doesn’t say anything, just reaches for her, and she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know what to _do_ , anymore.

( _—Foggy’s face,_ Jesus, you look terrible, _Darcy looking at her with eyes like poison,_ good, _and then the running, the running, the running_ —)

She licks her lips. There are tears on her cheeks. “I don’t. Want. Your help.”

Because in a way this is all his fault, isn’t it, if he’d just—if he’d never given the Union Allied drive to the _Bulletin,_ she’d have never met Ben, she’d have taken the money and hated it and never realized she could do more, she’d have just faded the way Wesley had wanted her to fade, and she doesn’t _want_ to do that, but if it means she would still be that old Karen Page, the Karen Page who’s fucked up so many times but was always so, so careful to keep it from affecting anyone else, who’s always been so _sure_ that she was terrible but never had evidence for it, not in the way that guns leave evidence—if it means she can go back to that, she’ll gladly blame the devil for it. Because the rest of the world blames the devil, don’t they? They all think he’s something—something cruel, and evil, and wrong, and maybe she’s the one that’s evil for thinking that he’s not, because _she’s_ just killed someone, and let’s face it: what does she actually know about the devil of Hell’s Kitchen?

He hasn’t moved. He’s just standing there, hand held out, as if he still expects her to take it. Her heart pounds. Her throat burns. The muscles in her legs tremble. She gets up onto her knees, crouching, backing away. “Go away.”

The devil’s hands flinch back. He looks at her. Licks his lips. “Karen—”

She scrambles up off the ground. There’s blood from the raw scrapes on her palms. She wants to gouge the city out of her. “ _Stay away from me_ ,” she says, and she runs back the way she came, flickering into the dark.

He follows her. Of course he follows her. She can see it in the shadows on the ground, movement in the corner of her eye. She takes a chain-link fence into an automotive repair place at a run, heaving herself over it even as her skirt tears, and she thinks she hears him curse under his breath when she does it. “Karen,” the devil shouts again, and how the fuck he learned her name she has no idea, but she doesn’t _want_ this right now. She needs to run. She needs to _move._ She needs to get the poison out of her, the sting inside her muscles. She can still feel the crease of the metal against her palms when she pulled the trigger, how it jolted up her arm to let the bullet fly.

(— _do you really think this is the first time_ —)

“Fuck _off_ ,” she says, when she uses a lamp-post to whip herself around the corner, smearing blood on the metal because of course the cuts from the stairs have opened up, of course the scrapes have started bleeding. Her blood is black, in the dull light of the streetlamps. The devil’s tracking her on the rooftops, darting through light and shadow, and when she stops on a corner to look around she sees him on a fire escape, watching her. “ _Fuck off_!”

“Stop _running_ ,” he says, but she’s not letting anyone tell her what to do. Not ever again.

(— _they’ll all be dead because of you_ —)

He won’t go away. He won’t go _away_. The devil keeps chasing her (and she hears music from her childhood, the devil on your back, never leaving, always following, creeping along in your shadow) and she keeps running because she doesn’t want to be chased, anymore. She just wants to flee, to go back to a place that she knows, and understands. She wants to be Karen Page again, and not this creature with bleeding hands and a gun pressed coppery into her throat.

(— _you saved us, Karen_ —)  

Another fence, another alley, another dumpster she squeezes past because she’s just thin enough, and when she turns right and then left and then right again she realizes she doesn’t know where she is. She’s been going in circles, and all they’ve led her to is this, this empty corner in an empty city with a box of rotting lettuce beside a broken door. She turns, because she’s not about to stop, she _can’t_ stop, but then the man in the mask drops from the sky and lands on his feet, hand pressed to the ground to keep his balance. When he stands, he does it gingerly. There are bruises on his jaw.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he says, and he sounds winded, for once. “I’m not—I’m not here to hurt you, you don’t have to run away from me.”

“Stay away from me,” she says again, and presses her nails into the brick wall behind her. There’s graffiti smearing against her palms. “God, just—just go _away_ , I don’t need you here, I’m not—I don’t need to be rescued this time, okay? I’m not a fucking damsel. Just go _away_.”

“Karen,” he says again, like he knows her, like he knows her name, and that hurts, that really does. It nags at her, pricks at her, makes her think. She doesn’t want to think. (— _because I’m sick of listening to your bullshit_ —) He holds up his hands, like he thinks it’ll soothe her, like she’s something that can be soothed. “Hey. I think you’re going into shock. I don’t know what happened—”

“The world fell apart, that’s what happened,” Karen snaps, and he catches his breath like she’s punched him in the gut. “Did you—did you _herd_ me here?”

“I knew there was a dead end this way. I didn’t expect you to end up in it.” He steps back from her, hands still raised. “You can’t be out here alone, not right now. You’d be a risk.”

“To myself or to you?” Her fingers are shaking. “Let me pass.”

“No.”

“Let me _go_ ,” Karen snarls, and she wants to throw up, she wants to run, she needs to _run_ , why doesn’t anybody get that she needs to _move_ —

(— _all because of you_ —)

“No,” he says again. “If I do, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“ _I don’t care_.”

“Karen,” he says again, and she knows the lilt there, she knows she’s heard someone else say her name like that, but she can’t breathe, she can’t _think._ She’s caught in time, and a thousand years could pass in an instant, because all she can do is stare.

“You think I believe you give a shit?” She shakes her head. “You know what, it’s just—I don’t need you. I don’t _want_ you here. I don’t need _anybody here._ Just let me pass.”

“Whatever happened, you can tell me.”

“You don’t—you don’t _understand,_ I can’t tell _anyone_ , if I tell people—” ( _—they’ll all be dead because of you—_ ) (— _tried to hurt you and you hurt him back. He tried to kill you, you killed him back. You’re alive, he’s not. Good._ And she knows she’s only alive because of sheer dumb luck and she’s not about to let them touch any of them, not Matt or Darcy or Foggy, none of them, none of them, and if the devil won’t get away from her then she’ll _make him._ ) “Just _get the hell away from me._ ”

She lunges. The devil catches her hard around the waist with one arm, shoves her back, and Karen _screams._ She wants to lash out with her nails, get him in the eyes. There’s a sickness in her, and it’s screaming. _This is what I wanted to do to Wesley_ , she thinks, and she feels the trigger under her finger again, feels the reverb.

( _—do you really think this is the first time—_ )

“They’re all lying to me,” she shouts at him, and she shoves him back because she can’t, she _can’t,_ she doesn’t want to be lied to anymore. “They’re all _lying_. All of them, Fisk and—and Wesley and everyone else, everyone I should be able to trust, and if they’re lying then you’re lying, because everyone tells me I should trust you and I thought I could, but _they’re_ lying to me, and I can’t—I can’t—” Her voice is fading. “I don’t need any more _lies._ I can’t—” (— _handle the idea of lying to them, can’t handle it, I don’t want to, that’s the reason why you called Darcy, isn’t it, because you’re selfish, Karen, you’re nothing but a selfish child who can’t stand the idea that she has to tell a fucking lie, how many times have you lied to them already, how many times have you tattooed your falsehoods across their skin, made them think you were worth something, made them think you were good when you’re nothing but a demon in the dark_ —) “Just—just let me go, please, I need to—I need to _go._ ”

“Karen,” the devil says again, and when she tries to bolt past he catches her, swings her around. He’s too strong, she can’t get away from him, and all the energy just went out of her arms, all the fight just went out of her, because she’s so tired, she can’t scream, and she knows that voice. _She knows that voice._ “For God’s sake, just—stop. Okay? Stop.”

She stills. She does it slowly, forcing every muscle to relax, until she can’t quite fill her lungs right, but she stills. She can feel warmth leaking through his sleeve into her skin, into the shirt she wants burned, and the devil lets her go. He pulls his arm away and steps back, and when she looks at him, looks at the jaw in the dim light, at the bruises on his skin, she can’t think. She can’t _think._

He undoes the gloves first. Peels them off. They’re Velcro and something else, some kind of plastic cloth that scratches against itself as he tugs them away, and offers them to her. Karen takes them with shaking fingers, because there’s a scream building in her throat, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Then, slowly, the mask comes off, and it seems to take an eternity, but she knows the cut of that face, knows the bones in it, knows the way his eyelashes shadow his cheek, and then there’s Matt, unmasked at last, the soft cloth of it tangled between his fingers. He stares blankly just to her right, lips parted, and she’s never realized until this moment exactly how much he hides, she’s seen him make faces at Foggy and Darcy but she’s never seen him open like this. She thinks— _he must never want to be seen._ He keeps his face so strictly in control, only shows the barest hints of what he’s thinking, never lets it give him away, and now there’s none of those barriers left, just Matt Murdock with his lips parted and a bruise dancing up his jaw and temple, fresh and raw and pounded looking.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Karen doesn’t think. She drops the gloves, clenches her hand into a fist, and hits him. She’s not sure if he lets her do it— _of course he lets you do it, you’ve seen how he is, what he does, you know what he can do_ —but she slams her fist into the corner of his stupid mouth as hard as she can, ignoring the way her hand bursts into agony, _screaming_ , because of course he’s lied to her too.

He just stands there. He doesn't do a thing. He stands there and he looks so fucking sad, not because he lied to her and she found out but because of how he thinks she's right to hit him, and she hates herself, but she's nothing left but rage anymore, there's only violence trapped inside, and she thinks, _you ruin everything, Karen Page._ “You fucking _asshole_ ,” she bellows, and Matt just catches her wrist when she goes to punch him again. He's still not looking at her, and she wonders if it’s a lie, if it’s a farce, the blindness, but no, his eyes don’t change when the light over the doorway flickers, there’s no give and take of the pupil, he must be blind, but now—she doesn’t—her brain won’t work, she doesn’t _understand_ it and she wants to understand it but she also wants to hate him, even though she can't hate him, she could never hate Matt, Matt's one of the only good things to happen to her in months, and she can't— “ _You son of a fucking bitch_.”

“I don’t actually know who my mother was,” he says, his voice quiet. “So it’s more than possible.”

She punches him hard with her other hand, in the chest this time. It's like hitting a rock. Her knuckles ache. “You fucking _lied to me_.”

“Yeah, I did.” He lifts his chin. “But I’m not anymore, Karen. I’m not going to lie to you anymore.”

Something inside her is winding, tighter, tighter, a clock spring spun too close. “I can’t believe that.”

“Yes, you can.” She lashes out at him with her free hand again, and he catches that, too, so he’s holding her by the wrists, and he could break them, she realizes, he could snap her wrists like kindling, but he just holds on, barely a touch. “I’m sorry.”

“You can’t—you’re not allowed to _say_ that.” She’s not going to cry. She’s cried enough. But the words are bubbling, she can feel heat pressing hard against the backs of her eyes, and oh, god. “You’re not allowed to say that.”

"What happened?" he asks, and she screams. Karen leans forward, resting her forehead to his collarbone, and she _screams._ She screams until she can’t breathe, until she can’t speak, until her throat hurts and her eyes want to burst and she can’t take a full breath. Matt lets her, and when she starts to cry, he lets go of her wrists to set his hand against her back. She buries her face in her bloody palms. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time when she sobs, she can’t make herself stop. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

And she’s not sure if he’s talking about the lying or the running or the fear or the gun in her hands, and he can’t know about that, can’t _ever_ know about that, but it’s all she can do to stay on her feet, and so Karen covers her mouth with both hands, and screams, and screams, and screams.


End file.
